Mayan astronomy
The calendar
Maya Indians studied in detail all celestial bodies such as the Sun, Moon, Venus and have reached significant peaks in astronomy. In the first millennium AD, the Maya began to use an annual calendar that had 360 days. This rather long period of time was measured very accurately and was divided into smaller intervals. In addition, the Maya owned a written language, even before the arrival of the Spaniards and Columbus in America, which many would envy today. The Maya Indians used mathematics, and even then they could count and used zero.
The Maya left behind many artifacts that show their language. In general, there are more than 10 thousand of them. These are monuments, dishes, steles and other artifacts. They, of course, are not of particular value, but books and manuscripts tell very well about developed Maya language.
The Mayan civilization studied space without using telescopes or other devices that are known to us today in their observations. Maya advanced in astronomy accumulating information about the planets, stars and the universe, and made such discoveries that other civilizations were beyond the power of.
The sun, moon and even the celestial constellations, the Maya could see with the help of the observatory, which they built in antiquity. Chichen Itza, a city on the Yucatan Peninsula, is one of the priceless Mayan architectural ruins. The main attraction in this city, according to many scientists, is a large ancient round astronomical observatory, which is based on a square foundation. At the center of this observatory is a spiral staircase made of stone that leads directly to the center of a building with large windows opening out into space. It was these windows that served the Mayan astronomers in the study of the Sun, the tilts of the Moon to the north and south, and the motion of Venus.
It was Venus that was studied by the Mayan civilization in great detail, playing a huge role in their life. Venus's directions of motion, astronomical data in the form of a table, and other features of this planet were depicted in Dresden Mayan manuscript.
All 5 terrestrial cycles, each of which was 584 days, and a total of 2,920 days or 8 terrestrial years, constituted one complete cycle of the motion of Venus. Mayan astronomers were able to compile all this into a complete table of Venus, which was then used to predict the future.
Everything that happened in space, the Maya regarded as an influence on earthly life. They also closely linked life with the concept of time, which brings this or that phenomenon, event or action. Maya Indians knew that everything in the sky not only affects the earth, but also in accordance with the time frame. could foresee a specific incident in a specific period of time... This gave rise to the creation of their accurate calendar, the Mayan calendar.
Historians believe that the Mayan calendar rightfully deserves the first place in accuracy, detail and depth of all existing in antiquity. The Maya divided their calendar into two parts: the first - ritual 260 days a year, and the second - 365 daytime weekdays a year. An interesting and mysterious detail throughout the calendar - an error of only 20 minutes.
The ancient Maya Indians left behind many mysteries that are difficult to solve, approaching this civilization with ordinary earthly standards. Not so long ago, the President of Mexico provided amazing information that sheds light on some of the events of that distant past.
As it turned out, in secret government vaults, underground, the most important historical materials were located for 80 years. These documents are direct evidence that there were aliens from outer space on Earth and the Maya Indians met with them. The declassified handwritten sources of the tribe state that our planet was visited by beings from a completely different starry world. It is expected that these materials will soon be published to the general public.
Mayan Secrets
In a fairly short period of their existence, the Maya Indians made a powerful breakthrough: they mastered writing and mastered large territories of Central America. They even built a model for the formation of our Universe.
But here's an interesting fact: the Maya, who succeeded in the sciences, mastered mathematics, created an accurate calendar, for some reason did not do the simplest thing - they did not invent the wheel. And after, when wheels and carts had served humanity for centuries, the ancient Indians did not even think to use them. But the Maya invented a lot to ensure and improve their lives: from moving on water in a canoe to performing complex surgical operations ... But the Maya did not have a wheel with which it was possible to move and transport goods over land.
Meanwhile, they erected huge pyramids of stone, which today amaze us with their grandeur. Did people carry heavy blocks on themselves during the construction of these colossal structures? After all, they could not harness the animals to carts with wheels due to the absence of the latter ...
Some researchers believe that our information about the movement of ancient Indians overland is very scanty. In particular, it is believed that they could possess the secret of teleportation.
This is confirmed by the Mayan handwritten texts, according to which any adult Indian could sit under a tree, squeezing a staff with his hands and closing his eyes, and after a short time open them in a completely different place. It is clear that this type of movement is much more efficient than carts. By the way, there are no data in ancient documents that the Maya dragged multi-ton boulders.
Aliens helped the Maya go to another space
Another mystery of the ancient Mayan civilization is its unexpected disappearance. The priests who made up the calendar, which so frightened us in 2012, were well aware of the planets of the solar system: some of them were discovered by scientists (as if repeatedly after the Maya) relatively recently.
But the ancient Indians knew about other, distant from us starry worlds. Now it turns out that they, among other things, met with space aliens. How did it happen that a rapidly developing civilization with enormous potential suddenly and inexplicably disappears from the face of the Earth?
And if we assume that all their knowledge and capabilities of the Maya received thanks to friends who flew in from another world? And perhaps we are not talking about the decline of a great culture, but about a simple movement to another dimension or another space? It is no coincidence that aliens are still showing an increased interest in the ancient Mayan cities, since they may be somehow connected with mysterious temporal-spatial portals for us ...
Once at a tender age, hearing the expression “at the end of the world” in fairy tales, I thought - where is this edge and what does it look like? If it just ends the Earth, and emptiness begins, then did they put a fence there so that no one would fall? Childhood is over, I learned about planets and Solar system, galaxies and The universe. Even now it is difficult to imagine the immensity and assume where is the edge of the universe... Probably, in this matter we are all like ancient people who imagine the Earth and universe.
How our ancestors imagined the world
Scientific attempts to describe the universe
Some peoples have advanced in knowledge of the world deeper than a comfortable legend from grandma's tales. The most advanced in this area were:
- Greeks. Officially, they were the first to suggest that The earth is round... But their theory was geocentric- It was believed that the Sun and the planets revolve around the Earth. Atomists suggested that our system is not the only one, and presented the Universe as a cluster of systems, in which they were not far from the truth.
- Hindus... The Vedas and Puranas allegorically describe solar system model like planets walking around the sun, and the sun itself - around the Earth... As the priestly level degraded, the servants themselves began to perceive the projection drawings as flat objects, from which the version about flat earth.
- Romans... Like the Greeks, they argued geocentric The universe, while calculating quite accurately temporal length of orbits planets and their remoteness from the Earth.
Today
The fact that today a lot is known about our Solar system, our and nearby galaxies, does not give confidence in the correctness of our ideas about the universe... Most of them are just guesswork... It is quite possible that our ideas will also fall into someone's discussion in 300 years.
Since ancient times, knowing the environment and expanding the living space, a person thought about how the world works, where he lives. Trying to explain the Universe, he used categories that were close and understandable to him, first of all, drawing parallels with the familiar nature and the area in which he lived. How did people imagine the Earth before? What did they think of its shape and place in the Universe? How have their perceptions changed over time? All this allows you to find out the historical sources that have survived to this day.
How ancient people imagined the Earth
The first prototypes of geographical maps are known to us in the form of images left by our ancestors on the walls of caves, notches on stones and animal bones. Researchers find such sketches in different parts of the world. Drawings like these show hunting grounds, places where game hunters set traps, and roads.
By schematically depicting rivers, caves, mountains, forests on improvised material, a person tried to convey information about them to subsequent generations. To distinguish the objects of the area already familiar to them from the new ones that had just been discovered, people gave them names. So, gradually, humanity has accumulated geographical experience. And even then, our ancestors began to wonder what the Earth is.
The way the ancient people imagined the Earth largely depended on the nature, relief and climate of the places where they lived. Therefore, the peoples of different parts of the planet saw the world around them in their own way, and these views were significantly different.
Babylon
Valuable historical information about how ancient people imagined the Earth was left to us by civilizations that lived on the lands between and the Euphrates, inhabiting the Nile delta and the shores of the Mediterranean Sea (modern territories of Asia Minor and southern Europe). This information is more than six thousand years old.
Thus, the ancient Babylonians considered the Earth to be a "world mountain", on the western slope of which Babylonia, their country, was located. This view was facilitated by the fact that the eastern part of the lands they knew rested against high mountains, which no one dared to cross.
South of Babylonia was the sea. This allowed people to believe that the "world mountain" is actually round, and is washed by the sea from all sides. On the sea, like an inverted bowl, rests the solid heavenly world, which is in many ways similar to the earthly one. It also had its own "land", "air" and "water". The role of land was played by the belt of the zodiacal constellations, blocking the heavenly "sea" like a dam. It was believed that the moon, the sun and several planets were moving along this firmament. The Babylonians saw the sky as the place of residence of the gods.
The souls of dead people, on the contrary, lived in an underground "abyss". At night, the Sun, plunging into the sea, had to pass through this underground from the western edge of the Earth to the eastern, and in the morning, rising from the sea to the firmament, again begin its daytime journey along it.
The basis of how people represented the Earth in Babylon, were based on observations of natural phenomena. However, the Babylonians could not correctly interpret them.
Palestine
As for the inhabitants of this country, other ideas reigned on these lands, different from those of Babylon. The ancient Jews lived in a flat area. Therefore, the Earth in their vision also looked like a plain, which in places was crossed by mountains.
The winds, bringing with them drought and rains, occupied a special place in Palestinian beliefs. Living in the "lower zone" of the sky, they separated the "heavenly waters" from the surface of the Earth. In addition, water was also under the Earth, feeding from there all the seas and rivers on its surface.
India, Japan, China
Probably the most famous legend today, which tells how the ancient people imagined the Earth, was composed by the ancient Indians. This people believed that the Earth is actually in the shape of a hemisphere, which rests on the backs of four elephants. These elephants stood on the back of a giant turtle swimming in the endless sea of milk. All these creatures were entwined with many rings by the black cobra Sheshu, which had several thousand heads. These heads, according to Indian beliefs, supported the universe.
The land in the mind of the ancient Japanese was limited to the territory of the islands known to them. She was credited with a cubic shape, and the frequent earthquakes occurring in their homeland were explained by the rampage of a fire-breathing dragon living deep in its bowels.
About five hundred years ago, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, observing the stars, established that the center of the Universe is the Sun, not the Earth. Almost 40 years after the death of Copernicus, his ideas were developed by the Italian Galileo Galilei. This scientist was able to prove that all the planets of the solar system, including the Earth, actually revolve around the sun. Galileo was accused of heresy and forced to renounce his teachings.
However, the Englishman Isaac Newton, who was born a year after the death of Galileo, subsequently managed to discover the law of universal gravitation. On its basis, he explained why the Moon revolves around the Earth, and the planets with satellites and numerous revolves around the Sun.
The mystery of time and the mystery of the Maya Indians. For a long time, historians of science have argued that only the countries of Africa and Asia were the centers of world culture. Astronomy historians believed that their science originated in the countries of the Middle East (Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt), as well as in Ancient China and India. However, in recent decades, this view had to be revised, as another center of culture was discovered. It turned out to be located on the territory of the "New World" - in Central America, on the lands now occupied by Guatemala, southeastern Mexico and British Honduras.Especially interesting is the Yucatan Peninsula, which was once inhabited by the Maya Indians who created their own unique culture. Until the II - X centuries A.D. e. in the southern part of Mexico and on the territory of present-day Guatemala, Honduras and Belize, there was a very high and extremely peculiar culture of the Maya Indians. The Maya civilization was a network of city-states, most of which were destroyed at the end of the 9th century. Already in the 16th century, the Mayan culture was destroyed by the Spanish colonialists, who, eradicating the local religion, burned almost all the manuscripts that contained both knowledge and the very history of the people.
And only when in the XIX century. the ruins of Mayan cities began to be discovered, and the remains of colossal observatory temples were discovered. One of the most famous Mayan cities, founded in the 8th century, Chichen Itza (in the north of Yucatan) was already in ruins by the time of the Spaniards. But the remains of its grandiose religious and astronomical structures (including the Karakol observatory) amaze researchers even now. "The Maya Indians all disappeared somewhere. For a long time - more than a thousand years ago. Since then, no one has seen them, and it is not even known why they disappeared. Some historians argue that civilization was destroyed by civil strife, others - that the Mayans died as a result of some they left us their beautiful stone pyramids and fortresses, their writing, knowledge of mathematics and astronomy that was impressive for an ancient civilization.
One of the most interesting and mysterious gifts of these ancient Indians of modern civilization is the Mayan calendar. "The ancient history of the Maya became known due to the fact that they had a custom to periodically erect steles in almost all settlements - stone pillars on which the corresponding records of the most important It is possible that many of these monuments of the ancient Maya people are "jubilee" or associated with various historical events. From these monuments it became known that during the first 8 centuries AD, various Mayan tribes built more than a hundred cities. According to most archaeologists, the period of the greatest prosperity of the Maya lasted from the 4th to the 10th century AD The Maya achieved especially great success in the development of astronomy related to the practical needs of agriculture.In various Mayan inscriptions, special hieroglyphs were found to designate the planets, the North Star and a number of constellations . In one of the found manuscripts preserved even a list of upcoming solar eclipses.
Astronomical observations were carried out in structures reminiscent of the towers of modern observatories. Franciscan monk Diego de Landa, who arrived in 1549 from Spain to the monastery of Isamal (Yucatan), burned the richest library of the pre-Columbian era, which contained all the achievements of the Mayan civilization, "since the books contained nothing but superstition and devilish lies ..." ! This is how the priceless archaeological treasure was destroyed. Although by now only four defective manuscripts (without beginning and end) of the Maya have been deciphered, but still two-thirds of the hieroglyphs with which something important was written in a temple, tomb, on a stele, plate, beads, etc. - are still inaccessible to understanding; therefore, part of the secrets of the Maya will not yet be recognized. Until other inscriptions or manuscripts are found.
Which, hopefully, exist ... In the found so far only four manuscripts (the so-called codes) of the Maya were discovered and dating back to different eras of BC. e. information about astronomical, cosmogonic and cosmological knowledge and ideas of this people. Some confusion of the surviving astronomical and astrological information can be explained by the fact that the surviving manuscripts are incomplete, and most importantly, these are mostly simplified rural priestly "reference books". A number of texts were also found on stone stele slabs. The worship of the Mayans, Incas, Aztecs to the Sun and the Moon dates back to ancient times. The priests at their observatories - sites located on the flat tops of the grandiose, tens of meters high, stepped pyramids, systematically monitored the sky, believing that all phenomena on Earth and in the state are determined by its laws. Particular attention was paid to eclipses and the movement of moving luminaries - planets, which were attributed to a great influence on the life and affairs of people and the state as a whole. The Mayan priests from heavenly bodies predicted happy or unlucky days for certain actions, not for individuals, but for certain social strata or age groups of the population.
As a result of systematic observations, the Mayan priests-astrologers determined the periods of all planets visible to the naked eye with fairly high accuracy. Particular attention was paid to the observations of the "Big Star" - Venus (mainly for astrological purposes). In addition to Venus, the Moon and shooting stars had a particularly strong influence on people, according to the Maya. Maya paid great attention to questions of chronology and chronology. They were the creators of the original calendar systems, significantly different from all other calendars we know. Scientists from a number of countries put a lot of work to unravel the secrets of the Maya writing, their original culture and, in particular, the calendar. Much has been done, although much work will still be required to fully clarify all the unresolved issues. However, a lot of interesting things are already known. The literature on the Mayan calendar is extensive.
What did scientists manage to establish about the Mayan calendar and chronology? It is now known that the Maya used two calendar systems at the same time, differing in duration: a long year and a short year. 365-day year ("haab"). One calendar - often referred to as a civil calendar - was used for household purposes. The Mayans determined by it when to sow corn, when to harvest and do other household chores. The year of the Mayan civil calendar - "Haab" - had 365 days, that is, it was coordinated with the solar cycle, which is very useful for agriculture. "Haab" consisted of 18 months of 20 days. At the end of such a year, 5 more days were added, which were called "days without a name" and were considered special. The priests knew that the "haab" was a fraction of a day shorter than the true solar year and that about 15 extra days would take 60 years.
Many researchers of the Mayan culture believe that the Mayan calendar is more accurate than the Gregorian one. They explain this by the fact that, although the Maya did not have astronomical instruments, they learned to achieve high accuracy in their observations of celestial bodies, using a special method, which consisted in observing through long and narrow slits, a kind of "sights". Twenty days in the month of the Mayan calendar were depicted with special hieroglyphs and had the following names: 1. Imish 2. Ik "3. Ak" bal 4. K "an 5. Chikchan 6. Kimi 7. Manik" 8. Lamat 9. Muluk 10. Ok 11. Chuen 12. Eb 13. Ben 14. Ish 15. Men 16. Kib 17. Boar 18. Esanab 19. Kawak 20. Ahau The year began on July 16. The first day of the month Pop, the first month of the year, corresponded to this day. The year ended on July 10 - the last day of the month of Kumhu. The other 5 days of the year were "days without a name."
This "five-day" was, as it were, the 19th, but a short month of the year and was called "Vayeb". This month was designated by the hieroglyph shown in the figure above under the number 19. All five days of Vayeb were celebrated as a holiday in honor of one of the gods - the patron saint of the next year. Table 1. Months of the Mayan calendar # p / p Name of the month Correspondence to the dates of the Julian calendar 1 Pop July 16 - August 4 2 On August 5 - August 24 3 Sip August 25 - September 13 4 Soc "September 14 - October 3 5 Sec October 4 - October 23 6 Shul October 24 - November 12 7 Yashq "in November 13 - December 2 8 Moth December 3 — December 22 9 Ch" en December 23 - January 11 10 Yash January 12 - January 31 11 Sak February 1 - February 20 12 Keh February 21 - March 12 13 Mak March 13 - April 1 14 K "an-k" in April 2 - April 21 15 Muan April 22 - May 11 16 Pash May 12 - May 31 17 K "Ayyab 1 Nyunya - June 20 18 Kumkhu June 21 - July 10 The names of the months in Haab were changed every 20 days, and not every day, as in Tzolkin; Therefore, the day after 4 Soc will be 5 Soc, followed by 6 Soc ... until 19 Soc, followed by 0 Sec. The days in the month were numbered from 0 to 19. The use of the 0th day of the month in the civil calendar is a unique feature of the Maya system. The Maya are believed to have discovered the number 0 and its applications centuries before it was discovered in Europe and Asia.
The years were not counted in the Haab calendar. 260-day year ("tsolkin"). The short calendar year of the Maya, called "Tzolkin" and having a ritual purpose, was constructed in a completely different way. The Tzolkin date is a combination of two "weeks" lengths. While our calendar has a single week of seven days, the Mayan calendar used two week lengths:. a week of 13 days in which the days are numbered from 1 to 13. a week of 20 days, in which every day has a name: 0. Ahau 5. Chikchan 10. Ok 15. Men 1. Imish 6. Kimi 11. Chuen 16. Kib 2. Ik 7. Manik 12. Eb 17. Boar 3. Akbal 8. Lamat 13. Ben 18. Etsnab 4. Kan 9. Muluk 14. Khish 19. Kawak Since the named and numbered weeks were both "weeks", the numbers and names changed every day.
Thus, the day after 3 Kimi is not 4 Kimi, but 4 Manik, and the next day is 5 Lamat. When Kimi comes again 20 days later, it will be 10 Kimi, not 3 Kimi. Next day 3 Kimi comes in 260 (13 x 20) days. This 260-day cycle was associated with each day of success or failure and is therefore known as the "divine year." "Years" were not counted in the Tzolkin calendar. From some hieroglyphic texts of the Maya, it can be concluded that the ancient Maya, in addition to the 13-day week, had a 9-day week, in which the count was conducted not by day, but by night, and each night had one of the nine gods of the underworld as its patron. Mayan calendar circle The Mayan calendar had two more large cycles: a 4-year cycle, in which the names of days and number of months were repeated, and a 52-year cycle (which was a combination of "haab" and "tsolkin"). The latter consisted of thirteen 4-year cycles and covered a period of 18,980 days. It repeated not only the days and days of the week, but also the days of the month.
Indeed, the period of 18,980 days contained 52 "haabs" (365? 52 = 18,980) and at the same time 73 "tsolkin" (260? 73 = 18,980). This dependence was the basis of the harmony of the Mayan calendar. Each New Year could begin with only one of the following four days: K "an, Muluk, Ish and Kawak. Each year they changed sequentially, and then this order was repeated. The dating of any event in the Mayan calendar always consisted of the number of the 13-day week, the name day, day of the month and name of the month. For example, if the date is written like this: "6 Lamat 14 Shul", then this means the 6th day of the 13-day week, the day of Lamat, the 14th day of the month Shul. Such a date could be repeated only after 52 years, that is, after 18,980 days.Since in the Mayan civil calendar, the year consisted of 365 days, and the month of 20 days, then every four years the first day of the year fell on the same day of the month, but on different day of the week.
Therefore, the entire 52-year cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar can be represented in the form of an "perpetual calendar" (Table 2), called the "calendar circle". Mysterious prediction While you are studying the culture of the American Indians, especially their calendar-chronological systems, your inner voice constantly whispers: should we not listen to ancient legends? What if the Maya Indians knew something that we do not know, but we cannot yet reveal their secrets to the end? What if their prediction of the date when the Fifth Sun (Fifth Age of Creation) will end and two more cycles (k'atun and baktun) will end at the same time - December 21, 2012 - turns out to be accurate (plausible)?
In other words, somewhere in the depths of the earth, a terrible geological catastrophe predicted by the Mayan priests is already maturing. They believed that they had succeeded in calculating the date of the End of the World, since they believed that everything in the world comes down to numbers and one has only to look at which numbers are associated with events, and it will be possible to accurately predict their time. Now the dates of the Fifth Sun will expire and, possibly, terrible earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and giant tidal waves will end humanity and herald the beginning of the Sixth Age of Creation (Sixth Sun, Sixth Mayan Era) - December 22, 2012. Thus, the Maya Indians, and possibly other peoples of America (Aztecs, Incas, Olmecs, Toltecs, etc.), were constantly concerned with how to calculate - and, if possible, postpone - the End of the World. Perhaps this is precisely the task that this entire mysterious unique calendar-chronological system of the Maya Indians was called upon to solve. Perhaps it was conceived as a mechanism, a tool for predicting a terrible cosmic or geological catastrophe. The method of using this instrument was the Great Secret of the "Redskins".
Many Mayan experts claim that these ancient Indians were well aware of the structure of the universe. This allowed them to predict that on December 21, 2012, global events will occur on Earth that will drastically change the course of history. Of course, the details of this message have not reached us, and researchers are still trying to figure out what the smart Indians meant. Many are inclined to believe that this is how the Maya predicted the "end of the world." Others believe that a new era will come on Earth, an era of spiritual insight. What do our astronomers say? First of all, this is the time of the winter solstice.
But this happens every year - it seems not the most successful idea for a space revolution. But besides this, on December 21, 2012, our Earth and the Sun will be in line with the center of our Galaxy. But this is already impressive. Imagine, the Mayans predicted such a non-trivial cosmic phenomenon for more than a thousand years! And they didn't even have lenses and telescopes. They conducted their observations of stars and planets using narrow slits. What this astronomical event promises us, modern scientists do not know. As they say, wait and see. How, why and why?
A number of questions follow from the description of the Maya calendar-chronological system: - why such a complex system of chronology and chronology was needed; - why were several calendars used at the same time; - why in chronology such gigantic, by today's human standards, time intervals were needed; - why the vague number system was used; - due to which the high accuracy of the calendar was achieved. The answers to these and other questions do not lie on the surface. All the secrets that the Maya once possessed, obviously, will never be solved due to the physical loss of many evidence of this civilization. The basis for the construction of all calendars are the laws of motion of the heavenly bodies and, first of all, the planets of the solar system: the Sun, Earth and the Moon. Since their movement is not strictly uniform, an error accumulates in the calendar from year to year. To maintain the accuracy of the calendar, it is necessary to have knowledge about the "structure" of the Universe and the laws of motion of the planets.
For this, it is necessary to measure their movement in some way. But the Maya Indians did not have any special technical, in the modern sense, astronomical instruments, for example, telescopes. The surviving manuscripts and monuments testify that the astronomical knowledge of the Maya was at a very high level. For example, judging by stele A in the city of Copan, Mayan astronomers knew the metonic cycle (repetition of the same positions of the Sun and Moon), determining that 19 solar years = 235 lunar months. The study of mathematical calculations in some of the inscriptions of the Dresden manuscript suggests that the Mayan astronomer priests were able to predict the onset of solar eclipses. The results of the study of civilizations indicate that since the emergence of the genotype - Homo sapiens about forty millennia ago, people paid no less close attention to measuring the time periods indicated by the movement of heavenly bodies than to finding food for a diet and making tools. It has also been established that a special set of verbal conventions designed to encrypt astronomical observations within the framework of mythology is unusually widespread in civilizations around the world. For the Indians of both North and South America, it is characteristic that all the most important events that happened to them, as well as knowledge from various fields, were encrypted in the form of a myth.
It can be assumed that the myth was used by the Maya Indians as a technical language, a way of transmitting information about the past into the present and into the distant future. It is clear that all the accumulated knowledge had to somehow be transferred without distortion to the distant future and to teach descendants how to use this knowledge. This is what constituted the main secrets of the Maya. To do this, they used various methods: calendar cycles were marked by the installation of stelae, all architectural buildings marked the time, events were recorded both on paper and in stone, etc. Now we will try to answer the most difficult, but most important question - why were such gigantic , by human standards, time intervals?
"By the time the Maya were born, they had already calculated the motion of the Sun, Moon and planets with an accuracy available only to modern science and the latest computers. They were simply obsessed with the movement of celestial bodies, obsessed with the calculation of time." It may be that astronomy, a deep understanding of time and long-term calculations were an integral part of a specific system of knowledge that the Maya inherited more or less untouched from an older and wiser civilization. It is known that the Maya inherited their calendar from the Olmecs, who used it for a thousand years before the Maya. But where did the Olmecs get it? What level of technical and scientific development of civilization is required to develop such a calendar? The Maya were obsessed with time and repetitive cycles. They kept detailed records. Every hour, every day, every month, every century, every millennium has been counted and numbered, connected to a set of specific signs, Each date has been rechecked with a completely different system to ensure that no mistakes have been made.
Since it is possible to predict the seasons by repeating them, and even predict recurring weather changes over a number of years, is it also possible to predict when the conditions will ripen for a repetition of social, political and even ordinary phenomena? For centuries, sacred books, copied by hand and passed on by one priest of the Sun to another, served as both eternal calendars and "books of human destiny." Using the systems of chronology, astronomy, astrology and divination, the Mayan priests were engaged in prophecy and predicted their future to people. Prophecies were passed down from generation to generation, were strictly guarded and constituted the Great Secret of the Mayan priests, as well as other Indians of America. It is the rules for using astronomical knowledge to predict the future of both an individual and humanity as a whole, both in the near future and in the distant future (on the time scale of the precession of the earth's axis and more) that constitute the essence of this Great mystery of the Maya Indians. It is possible that some of this information was passed down from generation to generation orally. "The timing of various ceremonies was coordinated with the position of Venus ... According to the position of the Sun in the sky, the calendar was corrected ...
The Mayan symbolized the Milky Way the World Tree ... "The Maya were known for the global cataclysms that occurred, for example, the flood of 650 AD, volcanic eruptions and others, which they marked on the time scale of the precession of the earth's axis. And they observed the inevitable approach of critical points (cataclysms) on the scale of precession for the sake of saving secret knowledge. The Maya Indians deified time. The spiritual heritage of the Maya Mexican writer, artist and mystic Jose Arguelles, having studied the heritage of the Maya, created a whole spiritual teaching. Arguelles claims that we, modern people, we live in a mechanistic time. What does he mean? The year of the Gregorian calendar, according to which almost the whole world now lives, consists of months of different sizes: sometimes 30, sometimes 31, sometimes 28 days.
This sequence of numbers is chosen by a person arbitrarily and does not in any way agree with natural rhythms. In addition, a person divides the dial of a watch into 12 parts, and an hour into 60 minutes. And these figures, too, people took from nowhere. Jose believes that living in this artificial time, a person loses touch with nature, with space, forgets his highest values. And a civilization that has lost touch with its native biosphere enters a phase of self-destruction. J. Arguelles notes that: "for us, the reckoning of time consists in counting successive quantitative units - minutes, hours, days and years - but for the Mayans what we call time is a function of harmonic resonance." These words reflect the deep essence of the sacred calendar of time. They show that time is a relative category.
In this case, time will not be the fourth dimension. It may not have a measurement serial number at all. TIME IS NOT A SPECIAL DIMENSION. IT HAS "EQUAL AMONG EQUAL" RIGHTS.
This hypothesis qualitatively changes the attitude towards the Mayan calendar. The uniqueness and universality of the Mayan calendar allows us to say that the Great Cycle of the Mayan Calendar can be used to measure all other dimensions. It can be used to measure "width", "height", "length" of 3-dimensional own space. It can also be used to measure its own space - time, where time will act as the fourth dimension. that is, Time can have a multilevel, multidimensional, cyclically repeated structure. The Maya used the Tzolkin's matrix to measure time.
On the basis of this matrix, they created many other calendars, including the Calendar of the Pleiades constellation, about which esotericism makes legends. Considering that the planetary and stellar cycles do not seem to be directly interconnected, it is difficult to get rid of the premonition of the mysticality of these calendars. And yet .... Maybe it is worth taking a closer look at this ancient people - what else has come down to us, its descendants? poan. ru
